Adoption of Virtual Banks and Insurers

Adoption of Virtual Banks and Insurers 12 Executive Summary As for virtual insurers’ products and services, the results show that 29% of respondents preferred a focus on travel insurance, followed by home insurance (17%), and health and medical insurance (16%). Three areas were recommended as the most important for virtual banks or insurers to focus on improving to ensure their success. In order of importance, these were security, personalized service, and quality of service. The most selected key words from a list of words and phrases to describe the success factors of virtual banks and insurers were “convenient” and “innovative.” Ways forward Brand awareness of virtual banks and insurers Virtual banks and insurers aim to create a new market position, and they have made substantial efforts to create completely new brands. The findings reveal that virtual entries lack reputation and consumer trust at this stage in their development. To address this, they could leverage their reputable shareholders’ backgrounds to strengthen their trustworthiness and reputation. Knowledge and adoption of virtual banks and insurers As part of their marketing campaigns, virtual banks and insurers should further highlight the fact that they are regulated and must abide by the regulations set by the Hong Kong Monetary Authority and the Insurance Authority. Since August 2020, for example, the five currently operative virtual banks placed banners on their websites highlighting that qualified deposits of their customers were protected under the Deposit Protection Scheme. Intention to adopt virtual banking and insurance services Without customer referrals, promoting a new brand and organically growing a user base will take time. It is therefore important for virtual banks and insurers to accelerate the positive word-of-mouth effect by creating a critical mass of awareness about their existence and service offerings. Two possible promotion methods are customer-referral reward programs and creative social-media campaigns. Creating competitively priced innovative products is also a success factor.